A hand fumbled for my arm. I was pitched into the black void that transported Incubuses from one place to another, but I didn’t need to see to know it was Link’s hand digging into my skin.
I was still spiraling through the void when I felt his fingers slipping. Then I was falling, and the world came back into view. Slices of the dark sky and flashes of brown—
My back hit something hard, more than once.
I watched the sky pull farther and farther away as I got closer to the ground. But my body slammed against something solid, and suddenly I wasn’t falling anymore.
Ethan!
My arm was caught, and the pain tore up my shoulder. I blinked. I was trapped in a sea of long, brown… branches?
“Dude, are you okay?” I turned slowly toward the sound of his voice. Link was standing at the base of the tree, staring up at me. Lena was beside him, completely panicked.
“I’m trapped in a tree. What do you think?”
Relief spread across Lena’s face.
“I think I just saved your ass with my superpowers.” Link was grinning.
“Ethan, can you get down?” Lena asked.
“Yeah. I don’t think anything’s broken.” I untangled my legs from the branches carefully.
“I can rip you down,” Link offered.
“No, thanks. I got it.” I was afraid of where I might end up if he gave it another shot.
It hurt every time I moved, so it took me a few minutes to climb down. As soon as I hit the ground, Lena threw her arms around me. “You’re okay!”
I didn’t want to mention that if she squeezed me any tighter, I wouldn’t be. I could already feel what little energy I had left draining out of me. “I think so.”
“Hey, you two are heavier than you look. And it was my first time. Cut me some slack.” Link was still grinning. “I did save your lives.”
I held out my fist. “You did, man. We’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”
He tapped his knuckles against mine. “I guess that makes me a hero.”
“Great. Now your head’s gonna be even bigger, if that’s possible.” He knew what I was really saying—thanks for saving my ass and the girl I love.
Lena hugged him. “Well, you’re my hero.”
“I did sacrifice the Beater.” Link looked over at me. “How bad was it?”
“Bad.”
He shrugged. “Nothin’ a little duct tape can’t fix.”
“Hope you’ve got a lot of it. How did you find us, anyway?”
“You know how they say animals can sense tornados and earthquakes and stuff like that? Guess it’s the same for Incubuses.”
“The earthquake,” Lena whispered. “Do you think it made it to town?”
“It’s already hit,” Link said. “Main Street split open right down the middle.”
“Is everyone okay?” I meant Amma, my dad, and my hundred-year-old aunts.
“I dunno. My mom took a mess a people down to the church, and they’re holed up in there. She said somethin’ about the foundation and the steel in the beams and some show she saw on the nature channel.” Leave it to Mrs. Lincoln to rescue everyone on her street with educational programming and a talent for ordering people around. “When I left, she was screamin’ about the apocalypse and the seven signs.”